A Path to a Quiet MindFrom "The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life" by Thomas M. Sterner

Introduction

Of all the riches available to us in life, self-discipline is surely one of, if not the, most valuable. All things worth achieving can be accomplished with the power of self-discipline. With it we are masters of the energy we expend in life. Without it we are victims of our own unfocused and constantly changing efforts, desires and directions.

Self-discipline, focus, patience, and self-awareness are interwoven threads in the fabric of both true inner peace and contentment in life. Together, living in the present moment and being process-oriented are the path that leads us to these all important virtues. This magical path is there for everyone. It offers its untold riches to us all. “The Practicing Mind” is about remembering what you already know at some level and bringing that memory into the present, where it will serve to both place you onto the path and empower you to partake in the journey.

Chapter 5: Perception Change Creates Patience!

All the patience you will ever need is already within you

The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialog is running wild and dragging you with it. If you are not aware of this when it is happening, which is probably most of the time, you are not in control. Your imagination takes you from one circumstance to another, and your different emotions just fire off inside of you as you react to each problem it visits. To free yourself from this endless and exhausting cycle, you must step back and notice the real you, the observer that just quietly watches all of this as it is happening. As you practice staying in the present, you will become more aware of the difference between the real you and the ego’s internal dialog, without trying to do so. It happens automatically for you. Staying in the present and in the process is the first part of the equation that creates the patience that leads to a change in perspective.

The second part is understanding and accepting that there is no such thing as reaching a point of perfection in anything. True perfection is both always evolving and at the same time always present within you, just like the flower. What you perceive as perfect is always relative to where you are in any area of your life. Consider a sailor trying to reach the horizon. It is unreachable. If the sailor sees the horizon as the point he must reach to achieve happiness, he is destined to experience eternal frustration. He works all day at running the boat, navigating, and trimming the sails, and yet by nightfall he is no closer to the horizon than he was at dawn’s first light. The only reference he has to forward motion is the wake left behind by the boat. Unseen to him are the vast distances he is really traveling just by keeping the wind in the sails and applying the moment-by-moment effort of running the ship.

Look at the things you feel you need to create the perfect life, and carry them through in your mind. Perhaps it is more money. That’s the biggest falsehood ever perpetrated by humans. When does anyone ever have enough money? The wealthiest people in the world only want more and worry about losing what they have. There is absolutely no peace in this way of thinking. The feeling of “I’ll be happy when” will never bring you anything but discontentment.

There is an endless nature to life. There is always more to be experienced. Deep down we know this and are glad for it. The problem is that everyday life steals this from us. It pulls us away from this perspective with a constant bombardment of advertisements all promising to fulfill us, but none of it ever works: “Get this, do that and life will be perfect.” We need to let go of this futile idea that happiness is out there somewhere, and embrace the infinite growth available to us as a treasure, not something that we are impatient to overcome.

People involved in the arts understand this endless nature through direct experience. It is part of all the arts. That is why I believe that a personal pursuit in some form of art is so important to a person’s sense of well-being. It teaches you this true nature of life right up front if you pay attention. When I was in my late teens, there were two incidents that created so much more patience within me as a result of a change in my perception.

The first happened shortly after I had started studying jazz improvisation with perhaps the best jazz pianist in the area. His name was Don. After one of my lessons, Don started playing around on the piano as I was packing up my music. I had never met anyone who played the piano as well as he did. He had earned his ability with years of a solid practice ethic working at the piano sometimes seven and eight hours a day. While he was playing, Don told me that he felt that if he didn’t start working harder he was never going to get really good on the piano. I was shocked by his casual remark. I commented to him that if I could play the piano as well as he could, I would be content to sit all day long and do nothing but listen to myself play. He looked at me and smiled. “You know, Tom,” he said, “that is exactly what I said to my teacher years ago when I first heard him play.” Don had studied with a world-renowned classical and jazz pianist. I had heard recordings of his teacher, who was extremely accomplished. Still, it occurred to me that if someone could reach Don’s level of playing ability and still feel unfulfilled, I was going to have to re-think both my motivations for studying the instrument and my feeling the need to reach some level of “perfection” in order to become fulfilled.

The second event grew out of the first and began when I was nineteen years old. I had been studying with Don for just over a year. I was trying to play a certain passage in a piece of music and wasn’t having much luck at it. I was frustrated and feeling a bit sorry for myself for not measuring up to my own standards. I wasn’t progressing fast enough in my mind. I made the decision that I would write down all that I needed to accomplish musically to meet my own criteria of good musicianship. The list included items such as being able to play fluently in certain difficult keys, playing in front of large audiences, etc.

Several years later I was working in a small practice room at college late one night and I was having another difficult practice session. I remember thinking to myself that I was never going to get any better no matter how hard I tried. Depressed, I decided to quit for the evening. As I started packing up my music, a crumpled-up slip of paper fell out of one of my music books. It was the five-year music plan I had made when I was nineteen years old. I was twenty-two now and I had completely forgotten about it. I sat down and began reading the list to myself. What I read took me by surprise and made a lasting impression. I had accomplished everything on the list in less than three years, not five. In fact, I had done things musically that I couldn’t even imagine doing when I was nineteen, and yet I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel any happier with my music or any better as a musician. My horizon was moving away from me. My concept of a good musician was coming from a different frame of reference. In that moment I had a realization which took several minutes to fully evolve. I became aware that there was no point of musical excellence out there that would free me from the feeling of “I need to get better.” In that moment, I understood that there was no point I could reach where I would feel that I had finally done it, I was as good as I needed to be, and there was no need to improve because I had arrived at my goal. It was an epiphany. At first I felt a moment of overwhelming depression and fear, but it was immediately followed by joy and relief of the same magnitude. I knew that what I was experiencing was a realization that all true artists must go through. It was the only way to build the stamina necessary to continue in an infinite study.

There was a sense of freedom in knowing that I would never run out of room to grow. There was a peace in knowing the race was over. Where I was “right now” was just where I should be for the amount of effort I had expended. I saw the wake behind the boat for the first time and realized I was moving ahead, pretty quickly as a matter of fact. But the most important truth revealed to me in that moment was this: the real joy was in my ability to learn and experience that growth moment by moment. The process of discovering the ability to create music that had always been within me was the goal, and I achieved that goal in every second I was practicing. There were no mistakes being made, just a process of discovering what worked and what didn’t. I was no longer struggling up a mountain toward some imaginary musical summit that was going to make my life complete. I realized the infinite nature of music and I was relieved instead of intimidated or frustrated.